A Study On The Relationship Of Working Memory, Anxiety And Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension is a vital learning skill in language learning whilesimultaneously it is also a difficult part for language learners. Hence, listeningcomprehension as a basic learning skill has attracted more and more attention. Recently,linguists and researchers have conducted lots of studies on the factors that affect listeningcomprehension and how to improve listening comprehension proficiency. Among the factors,one of the cognitive factors---working memory plays an important role in comprehending andprocessing language. Therefore it has the necessity and realistic teaching significance todiscuss the relationship between working memory and listening comprehension of Chineselearners. Besides, in language learning, affective factors of the learners have deserved lots ofattention. Anxiety, as a crucial affective variable has important effect on language learningespecially listening comprehension. Anxiety is a psychological phenomenon manifestedsignificantly in the process of listening and speaking. Hence, the listening impairment causedby anxiety is worth studying. The current research will investigate Chinese non-Englishmajor college students to discuss the relationship of working memory, foreign languageanxiety and listening comprehension. The study aims to help the teachers improve learners’working memory span, reduce learners’ listening anxiety and more importantly, improvelearners’ listening comprehension ability.The survey was conducted mainly through tests and questionnaires to find out therelationship of working memory, anxiety and listening comprehension. The subjects in thesurvey were181medical major sophomores in Hebei Medical University. Working memorytest in this study was designed based on Daneman and Carpenter’s (1980) working memorytest. And some revisions were made to the test. The listening comprehension test in CET-4inJune,2008was employed. The questionnaire was about Foreign Language Listening AnxietyScales (FLLAS) designed on the basis of Kim’s (1990) FLLAS. In the current study, somerevisions were also made to the questionnaire. With the help of the statistical softwareSPSS13.0，the descriptive analysis and correlation were used to analyze the responses of thetests and the questionnaire. Through the data analysis, the research results indicate that there are some relationshipsof working memory, anxiety and listening comprehension. Working memory and anxiety arethe two important factors that affect listening comprehension. In details, firstly, workingmemory has significant positive correlation with listening comprehension; secondly, listeninganxiety has significant negative correlation with listening comprehension; thirdly, listeninganxiety has significant negative correlation with working memory.Based on the findings above, this study provides some implications for future listeningcomprehension teaching and learning. Firstly, the overriding thing is to cultivate learners’listening comprehension skills. Besides, the teachers should help the learners improve theirworking memory span from cognitive perspective, and reduce or control their listeninganxiety from non-cognitive perspective so that the learners can enhance their listeningcomprehension skills and further improve their listening comprehension proficiency. What’smore, with the coming of the information age, teachers should apply modern audio equipmentand adopt various teaching approaches, as well as fuse many kinds of teaching modes inorder to stimulate learners’ passion and encourage their initiative in listening comprehensionlearning.